1980's

Gary Hart: The sex scandal that changed American politics

May 3, 1987 Miami woman is linked to Hart By JIM McGEE and TOM FIEDLER Gary Hart, the Democratic presidential candidate who has dismissed allegations of womanizing, spent Friday night and most of Saturday in his Capitol Hill townhouse with a young woman who flew from Miami and met him. Hart denied any impropriety. Hart, 50, […]

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Emilio Milian: Cuban newsman’s car is bombed

Through the 1970s and into the ’80s, local law enforcement authorities were chasing bombers all over Miami. Just as one bomb was ripping apart a Little Havana cigar shop, another was going off at “Fidel friendly” magazine offices. The Mexican consulate was hit, as were “Castro compliant” shipping companies. During this wave of violence, Emilio […]

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Prince - Rock Star Murry Sill

Prince’s Purple Rain concert at the Orange Bowl, 1985

Fans Crown Prince King Of OB Rock By LAURA MISCH Herald Staff Writer April 8, 1985 Dig if you will the picture — of Prince and Miami engaged in a kiss. A long, slow, wet kiss, Prince’s favorite kind, fueled by the purple passions of 55,000 rock fans gone crazy. In the Orange Bowl Sunday […]

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Miami City Ballet Luis Castaneda

Miami City Ballet

Miami City Ballet’s inaugural opening was at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts in October 1986. The sold-out audience delighted in two works of George Balanchine, ”Allegro Brillante” and the ”Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux”, as well as two world premieres, ”El Amor Brujo” and “Transtango”. Philanthropist Toby Ansin and NYC ballet superstar Edward Villella […]

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Staff Photographer The Miami Herald / John Rogers P

Miami Dolphins

In 1965, the American Football League awarded an expansion franchise to Joe Robbie and television star Danny Thomas for $7.5 million. The naming of the franchise was left to the public. “Dolphins” was submitted by 622 entrants in a contest that attracted 19,843 entries.”The dolphin is one of the fastest and smartest creatures in the […]

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South Beach

South Beach, with its sexy, high-octane mix of leggy models, hot sun and neon lights, has seen its fortunes surge and recede over the years. While many of the notable Art Deco buildings that give the area its charm were constructed in the 1930s, the beach had a second heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, […]

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Halloween

The smell of the plastic mask. The chills of the haunted house. The thrill of pretending to be someone — or something — else. From the spaceman suit to the two-person giraffe — and some costumes we’re still trying to figure out — take a look at the Miami Herald’s vintage Halloween photos, South Florida […]

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Venetian Pool

In 1923, Coral Gables’ founders had a problem: an unsightly rock pit in the middle of the fast-growing community. The Venetian Pool — one of the first public pools in South Florida — was born in 1924. Founder George Merrick got the idea to turn the coral rock pit — where much of the rock […]

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Miami Vice

Miami Vice ran on NBC from 1984-1989, and was one of the highest-rated television programs of the decade. The show’s plot followed two Miami police detectives working undercover, Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson, in this 1984 photo by Miami Herald photographer Donna Natale Planas) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas), in their attempts to fight the […]

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Miami drug wars

The deadly 1979 shootout at Dadeland Mall in broad daylight between Colombian traffickers– quickly dubbed ”the Cocaine Cowboys” by a police officer on the scene — heralded the beginning of South Florida’s bloody and violent drug wars in which drug dealers competed for Miami’s wholesale markets. The mob-style execution and growing violence in the streets […]

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